Michael and Iris’s Laundry Nook

Materials: Ikea Akurum, Rubrik, Lagan, etc.

Description: In this hack, we used a variety of Ikea kitchen cabinet parts/pieces to hack a laundry-nook for a Marin Eichler-built home.

We’ve found the Ikea Akurum line to be very versatile when it comes to hacking. There’s also a post somewhere on Ikeahacks about our own laundry-area home office that used trimmed Akurum cabinets and Nexus panels. We tend to take it to the line of near-custom-bult cabinetry which might be at the “high-end” of something considered a “hack”, however, the machine-precision of the Akurum hardware affixing points and shelf-peg holes (and overall low material cost) leave the Akurum line a more efficient approach than custom built.

For a behind the scenes (or under the countertop — which is a basic Lagan) look, I’ve posted a shot of the structure below. We used an Akurum cabinet reinforced heavily with 1in Meranti (moisture resistant) plywood left over from another project. The Akurum was cut down to the height of a single drawer and the stock white laminate drawer and drawer face were used.

In the base cabinet here, the plywood serves as internal braces to accept the weight of the machines and is just a hair taller than the adjacent cabinetry (to keep the weight on the plywood, not on the particleboard cabinets. Cabinets alone would be no where near the appropriate load-bearing structure.

One thing we’ve found handy in this install (and our kitchen) is the use of drawer faces for “spacers” — for instance, in the hack linked above, a drawer face was turned 90deg, chopped to height, and used as the faceplate-spacer between the two drawers. This is a good use of the drawer faces because they are (1) inexpensive and (2) finished on 3 sides (side/side/bottom) when you make just one cut. Since the top abuts the countertop, the lack of a finished edge on top isn’t a problem.

To attach this faceplate-spacer, you can see structure in line with the cabinet faces — the spacer was simply glued and clamped in place. If you were using a wood-veneer (Nexus, for instance), a few pin nails can be puttied over for an invisible attachment.

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Jules Yap "I am Jules, the engine behind IKEAHackers and the one who keeps this site up and running. My mission is to capture all the wonderful, inspiring, clever hacks and ideas for our much loved IKEA items".

I’m short, and I prefer my counters taller for folding washing (about chest height) myself. I understand from both angles as I loathe above counter cabinetry (what a waste for me, who cannot reach above the first shelf LOL!) but I like to fold clothes practically in front of my face I can’t even reach the bottom of the interior of my top loading washer without my feet being off the ground

Thank goodness someone thought of us tall people!! I’m so dang sick of all the short folks tearing down great ideas for us… finally someone has an idea so we don’t break our backs bending over for shorter counters!

@anon: It’s not necessarily a “style” thing, as being quite tall, it was Iris’ want to have the machines raised about a foot to enable easier in/out of the washer and dryer (more so than storage)… and the generally ubiquitous pedestals had been discontinued for their model of machines.

The top surface hits just a few inches higher than a typical kitchen counter, so it’s not unusable — especially for the tall homeowner.

Anonymous, have you thought you might be shorter than the people using this laundry room?

When I moved into my current flat I had to argue with the installers, as I wanted the sinks, basins, and working surfaces in general 10 cm higher than what is usual in Spain. It baffled them, even though they were tall men. I made them pretend to work on a normal-height stove and on one 10 cm higher and they admitted it was easier.

And I’m NOT specially tall, but always found I had to bend over too much to wash dishes, etc.

Looks nice!… although not real practical and a lot of work to gain un-needed flat drawers.

Yes I realize it’s in style to have raised W/Ds, but the resulting surface is too high to comfortably fold clothes, and while the upper cabinet doors hide the clutter, these would be hard-to-open for younger and/or shorter laundry helpers.

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